001May 13th 2000 kilometers compensation Commission is called to order I will call the roll commissioner Harwood commissioner Hewitt your Commissioner of Arad Commissioner press'll Commissioner Weinert yeah we have four which is a quorum first item of business is the election of a chair for this session any victim how many volunteers is renewal possible for you [Laughter] well that's funny because I was gonna I guess I'd be happy to do so sure thank you you have a second all in favor aye all opposed it's best okay is the chair not for what you wish for you have the agenda in this binder to have one first item is approval of the agenda if you have any questions I will try to answer them you can also amend at any time if it becomes necessary port am
002i taking over at this point all right any discussion if not all in favor of approving the agenda as presented signify by saying aye opposed motion carries wandah public comment we allow up to three minutes per speaker is there anyone from the public who would like to address this body okay thank you seeing no one will call the public comment period closed on to approval of minutes this would be the minutes of our October 11th 2017 meeting and it's at one of the tabs tab to attempt to come pretty well as long as the green circle is green that red you should be good okay someone willing to move approval of the minutes as presented October 11 2017 Thank You support so so let me just say that I wasn't able to access some of
003this oh that's fine so take a minute to look through it yep good thank you okay motion and support any discussion if not all in favor of the minutes as presented for Wednesday October 11th 2017 please signify by saying aye aye post and one abstain one abstention thank you minutes are approved on to Commission business we have a resolution to determine salaries of the mayor and city council members as part of this 2019 session Christopher do you want to walk us through what we have here just for a second this is based on hourglass the one that was done last time where it was an average of the CPI change and the non-union compensation changed last time we did it or would have been 2016 and 2017 2017 we only had information through August as
004of that year so we cut it off there this time we only have information through April and we do not have the non-union compensation for this year because that typically would tell me after the budget is approved so I've set it up as just before the basically the 2018 here CPI and non-union compensation change I've looked at the CPI data through April it looks like it's averaging about 1.7 percent compared to the 1.9 for year before so it's not going to make that much of a difference I do not know what the non-union compensation change will be if any so it's there tab we should be looking at right now yep so 3 is the resolution if you go to tab 5 that is the Bureau of Labor Statistics telling you that it was 1.9
005percent year over year ending December 2018 and then if you go to tab 6 you will the Union and non-union compensation changes if you look at the far right hand side 2018 you see 3% at the bottom for non-union and for 2019 TBD and that was what was used last time you know I'm struggling with something here which is that and and maybe this is the time to say this was when I was overlooking the minutes but it was my understanding that our resolution wasn't just to set the next couple of years of salary but it was actually a certain default procedure where this was going to be for the future the standard unless I will look back I believe there I know there was I recollect that there was discussion that it was gonna
006be a good idea to have that default procedure I don't know if it was that is something that I remember us discussing and I want to I want to be sure about that because if the the council is always going to be the last word on the subject and they are they can say no it just as easily as they can say yes and as we know in past history they've often done so however if what we have is a consistent standing resolution that by default this is going to be the number we probably need to be reminded of it yeah and as I'm thinking back it may have been that we discussed that and the body can't bind the future body's hands that way so it may be it was just that we're gonna
007set this precedent sort of and continue to do it kind of impossible I think that's what was discussed at the possession it does seem logical it does that you can't set a default going forward and buying future and nor do I particularly want to just because just by way of saying something that I have been thinking about and this has been a theme with us actually since I first sat on this board in 2015 is there there is a significant disparity between what the mayor gets paid and what the councilmembers get paid and especially now that I have started to see more closely how much work the councilmembers pour into what they do I definitely would want to be able to address increasing their compensation without regard to you know what these numbers are that
008numbers suggest because as these percentages increase the disparity between the mayor's compensation and the City Council members compensation you know it may be perfectly fine but it does increase there was was trying to do a bit more specific on the amount of time the job requires and then the over and above you know making sure you're having regular contact as you I have some thoughts yeah yeah would you please so the first time I said on this board was in 2015 and that was when we met like at the very tail end of the year and so we were really yeah we were really in a corner on that one and many of us were new and we had really no idea what relationship the compensation of City Council members bought to the amount of
009effort that they put into it and your predecessor Mary fields had assembled a significant amount of information about what other cities do how much they pay and all this stuff and it wasn't I think maybe some people found it helpful I found it not helpful because I don't know what they do and it kind of doesn't matter anyhow but we actually asked Mary to contact the City Council members and you know have them gives us some feedback about what it is that they do and that was done in haste and responded to not in haste and some people didn't respond at all and some people were kind of you know respond to verbally some people responded in writing but the overall impression was number one varies from council member to council member and two they
010pay no attention to this anyhow because they're not doing it for the money for which we should all be profoundly grateful but we were all recognizing that even if you added another five thousand dollars a year to their salary that might not be the tipping point for somebody else to decide yo I want to be honest do this job we are also cognizant of the fact that for the relatively meager amount that they get paid for what they do you know probably they have other financial resources so we were conscious of that well not really having the very clear idea of how much time each individual council members spent but certainly I think I've concluded they spent a lot of time a lot of time because council meetings themselves or I think they averaged five
011hours maybe I think it's quite that and there's the prep time that goes into that several of them have coffee hours during which they're available to their constituents and other people as well they've recently started up the caucus which is different I think from what the caucus used to be like but for two hours every Sunday night in for City Council meeting five of them are there to talk about anything that's on the agenda with a significant number of people show up for it including myself it is absolutely the most useful way of getting information and that doesn't count all the time that they spend on other commissions and each one of them is I think three on three or four other commissions for which they have to prepare it's a staggering amount of work
012so I've really been thinking about the fact that I would like to see them get paid more and in a year where it seems like everybody's wish list can conceivably be met at least before the economy goes downhill again I kind of like for us to consider it raising their pay even if in the end they they say thank you but no thank you you might have a point of clarity if we put forward a proposal for mayor and council compensation that gets rejected is that just it for the year there is zero increase for that year the next two years for the next two years so we don't get a do-over if we come in too high and and the council says ah this is we can't we can't accept this we would have
013lost it the opportunity for two years yeah I wish that wasn't so because I appreciate what you're saying but I also realized that at some point you would cross a line where politically it becomes difficult for them to support you know pay increase for themselves yeah I appreciate that I guess what I'm also saying though is that I would upon reviewing the figures I would like for our recommendations city council - I mean we could probably say this but not if this than that and maybe we could throw it that way but I would kind of like to see the increases not necessarily being lockstep with the mayor's because I think he's well-paid and I would think he would probably free the councilmembers do just a phenomenal amount of work and they don't get paid
014as well are those two numbers voted on as a whole termination is whatever it is did you go on the side and their name up or down so they can't up or down council pay and mayor is separate thinks it's one I do not believe so it's structured that way I could be right think they vote on the mayor separately from City Council but I'm not positive about that but it is an up or down vote you either accept what we recommend or it stays where it is and and please understand I'm also saying that you know we I'm not saying we shouldn't give the mayor and increase I'm saying that I think that the increase for City Council members could be on a different calculation but I also think that I mean I don't
015want to see people lock themselves into an up-or-down vote on everything and so it's possible that we could come up with a resolution that says you know how's this for size and if you don't like this what about that I don't believe correctly but I don't believe we have that option under the state law yeah under the law is we put forth a recommendation is void it up and down up or down by City Council there's no picking B or C or go back and try again under state law no I'm not the lawyer so yeah it'll fir here but that was my cousin my understand the way it's written it's in terms of a determination or a determination and now council doesn't have to do anything on it if they do nothing it becomes
016effective but if they introduce a resolution to reject then there would be a vote on that and that's what happened last year that the resolution was introduced and the resolution to reject failed I mean I said I agree with you in that I would like the ability to serve as a counselor the question of whether or not that has made people decide to run or not run I don't have an answer to would be an interesting question to ask but I I I do want to recognize that the work is important it takes time yeah I guess expand on that idea I would agree that the amount of work that's involved in this with paid compensation essentially lose to to a very small pool of people who can be council people but somewhat in with
017a demanding full time job and/or family you know just isn't going to have that kind of time and I looked in the City Council and I'm just comparing some of the numbers and we're simply on the low end here we're a very righteous weekend I'm there's City Council from both around Michigan and several around the country and then mayor and actually the mayor it's even farther out of whack if you look at some of our comparables here um sorry to interrupt they are being told to have folks speak into the microphones a little bit more City Council meetings - so the question again becomes how much do you increase to attract a larger pool on the one hand and on the other hand at what point does City Council say you know this is politically
018undesirable for us to approve it and I think unfortunately I don't think we have answers to either one of those questions well I don't think it's necessarily up to us to find the sweet spot that they can in good conscience approve you know I think we could probably do the modest increase thing but I'm just concerned that the modest increase we continue to under I don't want to say undervalue exactly but it doesn't represent a fair assessment of the amount of effort that it takes and again I don't know what the tipping point would be for somebody else another $3,000 another $5,000 by the time the IRS takes its cause $3,500 its I don't wanna say it's chump change but it's not so I just did a quick living wage and living wage for at
019Washtenaw County no obviously Ann Arbor is different but Washington County for 20 hours a week is 13,200 so that's 20 hours I think we're talking this prolly takes ish that but a nervous got to be higher than that because that's all Washington County so well let me throw something out just strictly as a talking point and this is strictly I not even know so they're proposing that's just so yes what if we looked at say a $2,500 a year increase for each of the two years where it would be in effect and made me do the same or a little more for the mayor or you know in that vicinity and I don't say I'm just throwing something out so we have something to start talking about you're saying like lumps a solid number as
020opposed to percentage yes why because I think if you look at percentage the only thing you can base the percentage on is some sort of consumer price index or Union and so you're inevitably tied to a pretty low number when you're talking about sixteen thousand dollars a year that if you start to talk about a percentage amount you know even a 10% raise is only what sixteen hundred dollars which I don't think really tips anything very far so that's why I sort of wanted to get away from percentages because oh you're giving a 10% raise that's outrageous you're giving them sixteen hundred dollars and saw well geez that's not much it does address the concern that I have that as we deal with it percentages the gap increases yeah I wrestle marginally but still yeah
021yeah exactly if some of the mayor's making roughly three times at what City Council is his raise is gonna be about three times as much now whether it should or shouldn't that's another whole nother discussion but yes it looks when you do percentages it looks like he's getting a big raise and the council isn't well it's the idea that that would sort of so help bring it up to be more comparable and then you could conceivably do percentage another time or just yeah although I think you know given the particularly the local economy it there's so much variation it's hard to say that oh this is a fair amount and we'll just keep CPI because things change dramatically if you you know you just have to look around our city that the average income in
022our city is going up considerably faster than the Consumer Price Index so if you you know if you get tied to a Consumer Price Index you're not really going to be behind given the the economic growth in the area and the attractiveness of the city I would add to that some of the discussion about the budget of late has been a recognition that although we do need to remind ourselves that you know the fat years don't last and the lean years come around again and so we do need to hold on to some of our pennies so that we can face lean years in the future that right now we are well set and it does seem to me that if we don't address what I consider to be an income disparity here now when
023we can we certainly won't be able to in future years and I do like what you're proposing because it doesn't tie it to a percent and as we know lean yes you said lean years are going to come and that it looks you know it's impossible to do something like that because it looks like you're you know right being unfair to the rest of the city workforce right and that was indeed the history heard close to ten years oh yeah wrote it down one increase after another yes they don't receive any other benefits no there was some discussion recently of creating a budgeting some funds for miscellaneous expenses office supplies papers and things like that but I think it was a matter of a few hundred dollars per councilmember yeah that was for reimbursement of
024expenses my understanding is elected officials are prohibited from getting benefits English understand and that actually is almost more of an inhibiting factor than right and salary right because it guarantees that you have to be able to get your coverage through employment or through some retirement plan or through a spouse again significantly limits what was that just looking at like we're if if you look at the the chart comparative of you know across city councils throughout the country you know we're on we're on par with westerns which has a significantly smaller population but you know in terms of budgets and availability that sort of thing but I was I was struck by the fact that there are you know type Arizona insurance availability that kind of thing was a benefit provided and it was still hard
025time so if you think about it in terms of that extra cost of you know it's not being provided so if you are doing this charge you're also paying for health care yeah I appreciate what's being said but as I look at the data and this may be a little bit dated with a few exceptions including you know up full-time councils and some few out of state larger communities were maybe close to I'd say an average on compensation and and I appreciate I do appreciate what's being said here and if I had my druthers I would be more than happy to post paying at it on my own pocketbook could it be more than happy to step up and say yes these people deserve this I guess I'm looking at it more practically in terms
026of you know kind of what the what the data is showing relative to other communities and what council member would reasonably allow to move forward to increase compensation that leads me there kind of back to where we started with a more incremental percentage approach the only variation on the theme that I'd be willing to talk about a bit more would be to to do it as you suggested on a choose an appropriate dollar increase for both so that from a relative perspective council would be getting a little closer to the mayor and kind of that base compensation that makes some sense to me but if we did that I would like to do it based on you know something other than just picking it number $2,500 and saying yeah that seems like a good number
027let's increase it by 2,500 and and I don't notice anyone have a sense of what could be a reasonable standard by which to to select a dollar amount as opposed to a percentage percentages are nice because it's linked to an index of some kind one of them I wish we had on this data and City Council is what Grand Rapids is if you look at most of the Michigan ones most of them suburban community yes there are very few that have an urban core Grand Rapids certainly would although much larger is certainly with a more comparable type of city then say Farmington Hills would be or selfie right we can try to get that for next time yeah and if you would get for instance Lansing which would be somewhat comparable there at twenty-five thousand
028so and you know something out of state have insurance packages with them so they're right right they're not comparable so it's a little hard to find what I would view is a really good comparable mm-hmm you know Kalamazoo possibly certainly Lansing Grand Rapids I would think would be perhaps the best comparable well I think with that if we're looking and you're right like going forward you know this two-year window would it be reasonable in terms iam I realize would be work and so I don't want to create work if it's not going to be useful but trying to get a sense of what is that time commitment and work of City Council in terms like what's the average number of meetings they're attending that's on here you know what and obviously people can change that
029depending on who they are like how many coffee hours they have and how much they're emailing with constituents but I wonder if it's something we can talk about like getting a better sense of what their work is for the like two years from now so we have that information to help inform this commission in the future I think actually it's a good way of if we if we found out average hours per week for instance then you could say well this job is worth so many dollars per hour and you're putting this in and you at least would have some you know rational basis whether the me just picking a number out of the air right now getting the information yeah that's probably gonna be a little more yeah was difficult what does that look
030like if we were to request something like that is that us doing the work is that city staff I mean I guess you could ask staff to do it be hesitant to talk with questions you want to probably suggest that you come up with the questions you want to ask if you're gonna be asking the council members what they want or what they spend per week so that we're not coloring the process in any way and then because it is your process as this body so okay so again I think the challenge is the timing Shawn because as I said when we did this in 2015 we were really up against the deadline and the varieties of response were they ranged from okay more work but I'll answer it because you asked - oh yeah
031I remember getting that email what did you want again it's because they're busy yeah well and I think of it like you know I just didn't in your review quick self-evaluation for work and I think that that I had to go to my calendar week by week in Reverse to figure out what kind of stuff I had worked on that I needed to know and I think that if we were to say hey council we're gonna want this information in a year or so here the questions we're gonna ask when we ask it again it's a reminder and even if they're not keeping track though oh yeah we should have been giving but I think that that would help to inform a more realistic I feel like I would still come more comfortable making a
032dollar amount commitment you what the hours were understand that it varies from person to person of course as it a yeah well if we were just asking one simple question um you know what's the average number of hours a week or a month put in the City Council I'd say a month because the weeks vary it sure is and see if we could get an answer back in a couple of weeks and it certainly will probably won't get everybody but if we got at least some at least have something to start basing a you know a rational judgment on rather than just well what does someone else make or what sounds like a good number and I want to say that's really pretty much what we did back then yeah partly expedience and partly because
033yeah I mean the more complicated you make it the less interest anybody hasn't answering it but I want to say that our overall impression was that it was 15 plus hours a week and that's average thing everything thinks out because you burn up that much time in any given City Council meeting week yeah I was trying to see if that number had been gathered by a so city or something of like what so that was um we have 45 days between now and next so here's a question if we were to say the City Council give us give us your average number a month or whatever number of hours then is if if five people respond is that enough information for us to make a decision is if everyone responds can we make a decision
034if no one responds can we make a decision I would say if no one responds we have left with less of a basis but I would say if five people respond they're 11 people on council 10 if you disregard the mayor not that I want to but just saying I would say that five responses that's pretty representative I would guess and if we are just taking an average of what those are I mean say it comes up to 15 okay that may not be perfectly accurate but at least it gives us a basis and it's it's not five and it's not 25 right so what would that how would that help inform our recommendations so it turns out to be 17 hours per week on average what do we do with that I would take
035that and say okay times 50 some weeks a year how many hours is that mm-hmm how much should someone be paid per hour for a job like this if you put it in right you know I see you kind of come up with an hourly I wish yeah and and certainly we will be guessing at that but at least you know you know the minimum wage is 945 an hour and I can tell you what starting wages are in the restaurant industry which is considerably more than the minimum wage so we would I think then pick a number that we feel like is a reasonable number for the amount of for an hourly wage well I mean I just did something okay with 15 hours a week at 780 hours I just picked $50 you
036know this is a leadership that's 39 thousand dollars a year yeah 15 $15 an hour minimum wage you know go at 20 its 15,000 so like they're not far off of what is that right now yeah yeah we give us some basis and at least we could say and this was our rationale there you know well thinking on how we came up with this number do you happen to know Christopher what the living wages for the city the city has its own calculation to and it yet 12 by 13 somewhere in that range 12 or 13 yeah so we're using what multiplier 17 hours a week 20 but and and you came up with the living wage the what was your source but yeah I imagine Ann Arbor I know Ann Arbor would be more
037and I haven't found that one yet so so at least is it a methodology yes involved is what you think yes alter methodology but at least we had a methodology right and yeah so we're not saying we picked this number because it sounded good right or we thought it was fair yes which was certainly allowed to do but it's nice to have and this is how we came up so the the current city living wage for the living wage ordinance is in 13 22 if you have health benefits 1475 if no benefits okay so that might be a basis and that's based on a single person which we can on the other hand you know there are some single people on council and we might want to have a few others and just to be
038clear the city's living wage is just it's not dependent on family size right that is just the wage per hour yeah that there's no there's no indication of that and I don't honestly know how it's calculated yeah it does it just it every every year I believe I think it's it's fit yeah it's per hour for employer employee so it's not making everything else to do it that's just the employee gotcha I'm also thinking of our accountability to the public I like the fact that this would be based on a least an assessment of effort and what seems like a reasonable wage but I also wonder if the pushback from the public might be you got these you know from the hip averages from five council members who may or may not be padding their
039numbers for whatever reason it's not really based on fact it's based on their imagination of or their sense of what their time is is this a fair way to represent compensation for an individual well I would say that again this is my recent exposure to city practices but when they send out a survey oftentimes they don't include everybody they might target I don't know 2,000 people and accept 1000 response as representative I would say that if we got responses from five City Council members that's 50% of the total that's a pretty high response rate and again it isn't our decision ultimately if they feel that we've yeah screwed it up they can always say oh this is not politically fortunate right but I do have the impression that as as you say we march on
040to a one-two-three disparity there is a sense that maybe it's time to try and narrow again just a little bit is there short of going through the minutes of every single is there any kind of tracking of how many meetings to official not that data is not collected in that way you'd have to put it together but we can certainly give you a list of who's appointed to what obviously different Commission's assignments have vastly different workloads sure so that would help though actually because that's an official rec I mean you know they say yeah typically people under an overestimate X you're talking about I think if we had oh and that kind of makes sense with this number of commissions or that seems mm-hm and again that's just official it doesn't take into account all
041the desk work we're trying to do this in some manner that seems appropriate that's certainly some data if it's and we can look at if we look at what every official Commission and how often that board meets at least we have some numbers or not but at least provided one additional metric to go we could certainly get the list how often they meet you know most of them are monthly somewhere every two weeks some are every other month some are ad hoc so that's gonna be a little tricky and it may vary depending on me so if you could just note that you know of the twenty Commission's our boards here's what we know of them in general they meet monthly in general they meet quarterly or whatever the so at least we can see
042what the metric is it's a frequency if their public meetings and they also have the work sessions yep and yes by the way going back to what I said earlier about the City Council meeting was running until 2:00 in the morning to me those overruns more than compensate for the fact that maybe you occasionally have a three our city constantly Moloi don't know that I've heard of it um this this approach seems to me to get at at least as another way of evaluating council compensation does this address the disparity between the mayor and council or would we be looking at the mayor in this same way from a compensation perspective or is this strictly a way to look at council compensation I think we should get them the same information about the mayor's we
043get about council and including if we're asking how many hours ask how many hours at some point we're going to get you know we'll have whatever data we have and we're gonna have to mix it together and say okay this seems reasonable based on the data we have so let's get as much easily correctable data as we can recognizing that some meetings last five hours and some last half an hour so if we have 45 days from today that's actually a fair amount of time if we ask people I mean I'm assuming it would be the point person right yep okay and we're not asking complicated questions asking people to respond within two weeks doesn't seem like a bad idea and then sending out a reminder to those who don't respond the first time around
044yep give me the language you want so that I'm not miss stating anything so I'm the throw sentence feel free to edit over the course of one year approximately how many hours per month is dedicated to your work on city council as a city as a city council member including meetings task force assisting constituents etc so just one big number and then is it easier for you if we ask them the question of how many things do you serve on please list know I have that information how about is a friendly amendment per week a month gets a little harder day yeah week sphere I mean I know they do vary yeah I kind of like me how many per month hours per month just because there are some meetings that some weeks that are
045off weeks off weeks and then you have weeks you're piled up with them right most of the meetings are monthly or every other week or twice a month you take it in times four right in the council meetings are twice a month so if there are five there are five Mondays in a month so yeah I guess my preference for me to keep it is did you have a catch-all kind of at the end that you know that wasn't explicitly noted or and other related tasks associated with your work on city council or something like that and similarly for the mayor except we're substituting that language we listen to the recording just got the gist do we need to be explicit and clarify like there are nonprofits that you know search for city council people
046to be on their boards just as kind of that I I think that's separate I think that's like the above and beyond it's usually I think yeah in your city council duty I think as long as it is clear and I assume that it is but duties extend to things that as you say assisting kids to constituents respond and communicating with constituents and everybody does it a little bit differently but yes we want to about anything that is discretionary with regard to their private activities yes or to pull political activities and if we need to be explicit about that in campaigning yeah yeah attending fundraisers or I think saying City Council duties yes Judy's doing that it's not a duty to attend to function well yeah this does not include campaign related yes would not
047include campaign to include that and perhaps we could say please include any time spent regularly in communicating with your constituents or other city residents okay so if we gather that information so you're staying within the next two weeks if we plan to meet in the next in three weeks that's twenty-one days that's splitting the difference with our 45 days I would also want to pull committee ask force information yeah I actually have that list all done at once in December they assign all the council members as far as the boards and commissions that they serve on yeah I can I can speak generally about some of them but you can also look on the city's boards and commission website like I say the meetings vary but they have all of their their schedule regular meetings
048are posted either believe they're posted on the web but they're definitely posted downstairs in the case as well so that should be relatively easy to collect at least for the bulk of them okay so you're prepared to do that before the meeting started to fill in any gaps that might be but mine will be sort of a general here's generally what they do but if you have any questions if not any gaps as you could do that yourself so my proposal in terms of time table would be send out the email ask for response within two weeks if you haven't heard from people within two weeks send out a reminder give them an additional week so that would take it out for three weeks and you would want to maybe pull something together but you
049would have done most of the pulling together by that time so I thought we meet you know that would be the the 10th of June Monday the 10th okay but if that looks at least preliminarily on noon on the 10th and verify it works for the four of us and Christopher for you I will make it work we also do a poll thank you okay this is good thank you people for you is there any other room is there any other data you'd like me to get you're asking guy here at Grand Rapids at her Kelly oh yes Grand Rapids would be nice too you might put midland in there it's doing fairly well no it's a company town and these just answer your question these these are current this information is current unless otherwise
050noted there's a few that were left over from the last one and those are starred and I believe these comparables were they were a result of some other I think it was hiring or no it was the salary there's a compensation survey the HR did last year they identified these cities as as comparables for that survey so that's why they were used but I can certainly ask about these three comparable huge I don't think needs to be done now but in the future the annual budgets for some of these cities and it is it just hiding here so on the second to last page in a very small fine yes there's a little bit of that and I think this is from this might be from the Michigan Municipal League that has some of that
051in fact yeah so I didn't collect this so I'm not sure exactly how to read it but Kalamazoo is in there which tab is it it's tab 7 but it was a second from the last page it does have a budget the budget revenues and budget expenses can that column there but if you want I can ask them to follow up with that question as well don't know how much of an answer though before we make that work happen would people find that useful there's a smaller budget sometimes more work yeah I mean the only question I have is is that budget all their expenses people have eight different way to put different things in their budget and different things in different funds and sometimes one city versus in other cities budget numbers are really
052comparable depending on if we knew if that was clearly the overall all city expenditures mm-hmm that could be useful I know and some some cities you know will run a utility or something that's a whole different then don't worry about it I would say if it's easily achieved like yeah I was actually astounded to find out how big our budget is so that does make a difference it's just you're right you're looking at numbers yeah so the HR does this because they're used to doing that and they send out and they get responses sometimes sometimes not sometimes they follow up usually these are not hard questions but it's just a matter of getting someone to pay attention okay I also wonder if it would be helpful to pull I'm assuming out of the city charter
053a listing of the duties the formal duties in the Charter for the mayor and for councilor just so we can see what how inclusive each of those lists are in terms of responsibilities I have a vague recollection this may have been done at some point in the past so I'll try to dig that up yeah I can quickly okay it's just in one place and that's a very good point and again we kind of I hesitate to use the word lump long because actually we do very well for a group of people that meet every two years maybe twice but this is good information for us to have mm-hmm and if you think of anything else you can just email me and if it's something that we can do I can just do it you
054don't have to anything else with for this agenda item if not any communications oh one other point on this you mentioned that trying to explain to Council if you want and this wasn't done last year but you could include a little explanatory where as clause or memo uh-huh when you do this to say here here's why we're raising or proposing a raise it's to encourage this that the other thing so at least your reasoning would be there there on the record things that would be important to do so somebody wouldn't get it right that really appreciate your volunteering decision that will that be me but I'm having to take a look at it but just some if somebody needed some homework to draft something for next time you might consider apportioning that in some way
055would someone be willing to take at least a preliminary cut at that it's a my oh yes I can can I email it to everybody or do it over the meetings you can email it but tell you what why don't you email it to me and I'll forward it to everyone and blind copy everyone just so that there's no discussion about it but people can then look at it in advance of the next meeting and bring their comments and it could just be bullet points you know I can do it hope if you don't so just to clarify you're saying that that is not going to be the preamble for this email but it might be for future emails I just I'm saying if if if you end up passing a resolution that recommends an
056increase as you're discussing and you want some rationale there for that to chew on something to include that you would adopt at the time and you're saying that could take the form of whereas clauses in the resolution or a separate cover memo that yes out are thinking yes okay thank you and thanks for sure Sean okay Communications any - no I think we've covered it Oh anything else for the good of the order if not we stand adjourned is it exactly one o'clock in case you need a motion to adjourn oh if we attorney yes support support all in favor aye aye meetings adjourned and thank you for doing this yeah yes you